Steam

Back toward the end of 2018, Electronic Arts announced that it was working with Petroglyph on remastering the Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Since that announcement, we've seen some glimpses of the games in development, but now they're ready for primetime. Electronic Arts launched the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection today, which is available through both Steam and Origin.

Years ago, many of Electronic Arts' PC games could be found on Steam. New EA releases were published there frequently, but then one day, Electronic Arts decided that it wanted to take the fight to Steam, launching Origin as a storefront all its own. Many of EA's existing games were left on Steam after Origin launched, but from that point on, all of the company's new games were only accessible through Origin.

It was only a matter of time before Valve jumped onto the game streaming bandwagon but it seems it's using the advantage of hindsight to avoid the problems its peers and rivals have bumped into. Steam Cloud Play isn't exactly technically a game streaming service but is more a platform that connects games with actual game streaming services. The first such service it is supporting is NVIDIA's GeForce NOW and it is assuring game developers and publishers that nothing really changes on their end.

Today we're taking a peek at the Steam Top Release list for April 2020, released here on the 22nd of May, 2020. This list includes a very strange assortment of games, some for kids, some for adults... and there's a golf game too. As it was with all previous releases, the Top Steam Releases list for April 2020 was compiled by measured revenue generated during the first two weeks after launch.

Game streaming services like Google's Stadia are advertised to break down barriers that prevent gamers from playing their favorite titles the way they want. It turns out there are some barriers it just can't break down, barriers that are set up more by business considerations rather than technical limitations. Gamers will be reminded of that unfortunate reality when Serious Sam 4 launches in August on PCs and Stadia but not on consoles it was once advertised to launch on as well.

Valve's own games have long been popular not just for their intrinsic value but also for their modder-friendliness. That kind of thinking has fortunately also seeped into Steam via the platform's Workshop feature, giving rise to countless mods, some of which grow up to be games in their own right. Now Valve is extending that to its first big VR game, giving modders the green light to take what they can from Half-Life: Alyx for their own twist on the game or even completely new VR experiences.

No longer the unchallenged king of PC game digital distribution, Valve has been updating its Steam platform not just in appearance but also in small bits of behavior here and there. Those have mostly been filed under its "Steam Labs Experiments" but, from time to time, those features do make their way to the actual Steam implementation. Just like Experiment number 008 that is now rolling out to the Steam Library to tell you you might want to play next.

The folks at Square Enix just put a whole bunch of games in a big bundle to sell to gamers staying at home - all to fight COVID-19. This might be the start of a big push on the part of game-makers across the spectrum. If the Square Enix Stay Home & Play campaign "rewards gamers for practicing social distancing and also help charities that need support," and it works, the future's going to look a whole lot more bright than it looks today.

This morning the folks at 505games announced the Early Access release of DRIFT21, a fully immersive high-end car racing game with fully licensed vehicles and tracks. This game includes hardware steering wheel accessory support right out the gate with Thrustmaster, Fanatec, and Logitec. Users will be able to begin playing immediately with a relatively limited cross-section of vehicles and tracks - but that'll expand QUICKLY.

This week Valve made clear they're not in a position where it makes sense to continue supporting Apple's OSX for their SteamVR platform at this time. They've suggested that the SteamVR platform will continue to receive support, but all support will be focused on Windows and Linux. Users of Apple computers, running OSX, will need to use use "legacy builds" from this point forward.

With various stay-at-home orders in place in many regions around the world, there are a lot of people who have a lot of time on their hands. Thankfully, many game publishers have held sales or even offered some games for free for a limited time. Sega is the latest publisher to do the latter, announcing that Total War: Shogun 2 is free to keep on Steam for a limited time.

Today the folks at Bandai Namco US delivered a message of thanks to the public with their "goodwill ambassador" PAC-MAN. Their announcement was that they'll be "asking fans to do their part and have More Fun For Everyone at home" - the "more fun for everyone" is their own tagline. To make this a reality, and to thank gamers for staying home, Bandai Namco US is delivering PAC-MAN Championship Edition 2 for free starting on April 24, 2020.